The Taipei District Court on Wednesday sentenced Fanny Liu (劉樂妍), a former member of the now-disbanded female pop group Fantasy 4, to 10 years in prison for vote-buying.
The court found Liu — who is now based in China and has made pro-Chinese Communist Party remarks — guilty of reducing the rent on a Taipei property she owned in exchange for the tenant voting for a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate in the November 2018 nine-in-one local elections.
She can appeal the ruling.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Liu in December 2018 reportedly lowered the rent by NT$1,000 after the tenant said they had voted for Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強), prosecutors said.
Liu was to appear in court last year, but did not show up, citing her busy work schedule in China, prosecutors said, adding that they first learned of the vote-buying when Liu posted about it on Facebook.
“What I’m doing here is not vote-buying, but rather it is intervening in the elections with Chinese capital,” she wrote.
A Taiwanese Facebook user saw the post and passed a screenshot of it to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
After an investigation confirmed the payment, prosecutors charged Liu with vote-buying.
During questioning, Liu reportedly admitted to vote-buying, saying she had asked the tenant to vote for Lo, as she knew that their household registration listed them with an address in Taipei’s sixth electoral district, where Lo was running for councilor, prosecutors said.
Liu said the NT$1,000 was to cover the cost of taxi fare to the polling station, they added.
Prosecutors also questioned the tenant, who said that Liu always discussed politics with them, but that they “did not want to listen to it.”
The tenant reportedly told Liu that they had voted when they had not, prosecutors said, adding that they checked election records and confirmed that the tenant had not voted.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
Temperatures are forecast to drop steadily as a continental cold air mass moves across Taiwan, with some areas also likely to see heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. From today through early tomorrow, a cold air mass would keep temperatures low across central and northern Taiwan, and the eastern half of Taiwan proper, with isolated brief showers forecast along Keelung’s north coast, Taipei and New Taipei City’s mountainous areas and eastern Taiwan, it said. Lows of 11°C to 15°C are forecast in central and northern Taiwan, Yilan County, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, and 14°C to 17°C
STEERING FAILURE: The first boat of its class is experiencing teething issues as it readies for acceptance by the navy, according to a recent story about rudder failure The Hai Kun (海鯤), the nation’s first locally built submarine, allegedly suffered a total failure of stern hydraulic systems during the second round of sea acceptance trials on June 26, and sailors were forced to manually operate the X-rudder to turn the submarine and return to port, news Web site Mirror Daily reported yesterday. The report said that tugboats following the Hai Kun assisted the submarine in avoiding collisions with other ships due to the X-rudder malfunctioning. At the time of the report, the submarine had completed its trials and was scheduled to begin diving and surfacing tests in shallow areas. The X-rudder,
RSS